According to the New York Times, the NSA plans to disclose intercepted private communications to other federal agencies, including records of communications concerning US persons. The substantial change in agency practices "would relax longstanding restrictions on access to the contents of the phone calls and email." In 2013, EPIC and a group of legal scholars and technical experts, petitioned the NSA to undertake a public rule making on "the agency's monitoring and collection of communications traffic within the United States." EPIC has previously urged the Department of Defense to ensure that the NSA complies with the federal Privacy Act and has opposed expansion of the "Operations Records" database.